Said nothing. He pressed the button.
Our entire action now depends on Kishnar. Until I learn that he has accomplished his assignment there can be no furtherance of our project. Tomorrow I shall go to Singapore and await this information.
'The day before yesterday,' Loman said, and lifted the pause button.
The preparations I spoke of are now set up, but our proposed action must await news of an unhampered environment. We must not underestimate the British-Thai intelligence operations mounted against us.
Loman played three more tapes, but they were mostly a distillation of the background political aspects of the revolutionary groups deployed throughout Indo-China, some of them under Shoda's command.
'This one,' Loman said finally, 'is where she is speaking either to an Englishman or an American or at least to someone who doesn't have her various Asian languages. We're trying to find out who he is.'
I am told that, pending the now imminent arrival of the consignment, every tactical element is now in place, but there is still no news from Kishnar, and I am now on my way to Singapore. If you need to reach me I shall be airborne at 5 p. m. and you can use the radio-phone.
It was the first time I'd heard her speaking in English. It was clear and almost without an accent. The sibilants were silky and attenuated, as I remembered from hearing her voice in the radio station, and it had the same energy; but there was something in her tone that hadn't been there before; it was a degree of tension, of strain. I had the sense that the world of Mariko Shoda wasn't any longer spinning the way she wanted it.
Loman shut the thing off. 'Do you have any comments?'
I got off the floor, wanting movement.
'I hadn't realised things were so close.'
He didn't answer, and suddenly I knew why. Things were close only if they could hit me between now and when the Slingshot consignment arrived.
'All right, her operation can't start unless I'm out of the running, so she's going to be throwing the whole thing at me now. She's got no more time to try doing it by stealth, trying to keep it discreet – one man with a bit of wire. If they see me, they'll just shoot, from anywhere – right?'
'That's why we've asked the Singapore police for their help, through diplomatic channels. That's why this place is under guard.'
'But, for Christ's sake, you can't just keep me cooped up in here so that she's got to put her operations permanently on ice. She might easily lose patience and risk it and have a go regardless.'
Loman didn't answer. And nothing from Pepperidge. They'd got things worked out and they wanted to know what my attitude was, because I was the key factor and they'd have to plan according to what I was prepared to do. This was routine direction in the field and that was all right but I couldn't see which way we could make a move, or if there were any way at all.
'Have you got any more briefing for me?' I thought he had, but was holding it back for some reason. Pepperidge was looking into the middle-distance again and I noted it.
Loman started walking around suddenly: it was like a bloody zoo – we all felt caged up in this place.
'Perhaps you should be informed,' he said in a moment, 'that in support of your assumption that Shoda will now do everything in her power to "remove the British agent", two charter plane loads of so-called tourists have arrived in Singapore this morning, one from Cambodia and one from Laos. Our contacts are reasonably certain that they've been brought in to support the surveillance teams.'
Meant hit teams.
'All right. At least we know the score.'
I felt Katie's eyes on me. She was Bureau and she'd probably worked with shadow executives before and she knew what we were going to have to do to get out of the shut-ended situation we were in: we were going to have to take one hell of a risk in the hope that it'd come off and leave this little ferret still alive – bloodied, perhaps, but still with its whiskers on, and listen, I'm putting it lightly as I'm sure you've noticed, because at this particular moment I'd started feeling scared and it wasn't very long since the Kishnar thing and my nerves were on a roller-coaster and there wouldn't be a chance of getting them off it until something conclusive was done, something terminal, finis, one way or the other, Shoda or me.
It all came down to that.
And everyone knew it: Loman, Pepperidge, Katie, and halfway round the world in London, Croder, Chief of Control.
However, nil desperandum, so forth, try a few more knee-bends, rough on the left thigh but we need to keep the adrenalin down.
'How long will it be,' I asked Loman, 'before you hear that your second unit has found the Slingshots and taken them over? If they can, in fact, do that?'
'We shall be informed at once.' He seemed surprised.
'Not through London?'
'Either through London or direct, or both. Why?'
'I'm not absolutely sure.' He came and looked down at me; I was at the bottom of a knee-bend, bouncing on the muscles. 'But I think it's very important.' Sounded lame, but the left brain had started working on something and this was one of the components. 'It's important,' I tried again, 'that we should know as soon as possible if and when that consignment has been seized – that's to say, has been removed from any danger of Shoda's getting hold of it. That's important.' I got up and moved around. 'It's also very important that if the Slingshots are made safe and brought out of Shoda's reach, she doesn't know about it until she and I are face to face.'
I listened to the echo of what I'd just been saying and tested it out and found some flaws and tried patching them up and ran it through again, sensing I was getting close to some kind of overkill action but not quite knowing what it was or how it would work.
When I stopped and looked around I saw they were all watching me, not moving.
'There's a time thing,' I told Loman, 'that's got to be thought about. There's a narrow margin of time involved.'
In a moment Loman asked over-casually, 'Have you got anything potentially constructive in mind?'
'What the fuck does that mean?'
Quite a long silence. Yes, I know what potentially means and I know what constructive means but I'd been way out in the right brain and words like those lose most of their meaning because they're so bloody long that you've got to stop and think what they're trying to say.
'Sorry.'
'Not at all.'
Toujours la politesse and all that, but you know I do wish that little snit would speak the queen's bloody English when we're all trying to think out how to destroy the objective.
'Let's start from this,' I said. 'I can't make a hit.' Silence again. They needed more data. 'I'm not a hired gun, you know that. The only time I killed anyone in cold blood it was because he'd betrayed a woman and she was trapped and shot dead. I'm not -' I found myself staring at Loman, wanting the little bastard to get the point – 'I'm not a hit man for the Bureau. Is that understood?'
'Of course.' Tone icy.
'So what I've got to do is destroy the objective, Shoda, without killing her. The mission you're running is aimed at the destruction of the Shoda organisation and I'm the executive in the field' – began walking around again – 'and we've got our faces shoved right up against the end-phase and we haven't got a bloody clue as to how we're going to bring this thing off.'
In a minute Pepperidge said very quietly, 'I rather think you have, old boy.'
'What?' I swung round. 'Possibly. A very small one. I'm just thinking aloud, trying to get feedback.'
I went across and poured some more coffee and put it down again without drinking any because we were in the extreme end-phase of the mission and I was on a collision course with a woman who'd got a small army out there waiting for me and I didn't want to be caught at the wrong end of a caffeine curve; that sort of thing can kill you.